Spotify support - same as Tidal

Is this on the cards

Hi have a read of What streaming services will be supported at launch? Danny’s post has some interesting insight re Spotify.

Thanks Carl
That is so disappointing ref Spotify not caring etc.
Your Tidal implementation on first use seems really good and the music quality off my macbook with a Fulla Shit DAC is also great.
If Tidal had all the music I like, I’d dump Spotify, as I really dont need 2 similar services and of course SQ with Tidal should be better, but when I search for stuff on both, very often Tidal doesnt have what I’m looking for and Spotify does.
I have so many playlists on Spotify aswell, which I find easier to manage in Spotify than on Tidal

Anyway, I guess Spotify have got big enough to believe they dont need Roon.

In the future, ultimately, though, logic says why have compressed when Red Book or better is on offer, and so a unified Streamer Player like Roon makes perfect business sense, and you are there first !!

I’m just looking at buying a NAS and re-ripping all my CD’s, so to have that static collection, plus Tidal plus any FLAC downloads in one interface is perfect.

I really hope Roon becomes the defacto standard and leader.

Cheers Phil

Is that a Typo…or an appropriate description of your DAC?? :wink:

its a bit of a typo Ronnie :relaxed:
but for £60 or so it was a good alternative to a Dragonfly
check it out

Spotify support, is something that would be much appreciated by many users. For the simple reason, that Tidal is missing key artists that Spotify has. +1 for this!

Is there not a risk of vice versa? I suspect the reality for the future for us all is to choose your streaming provider (based on a personal trade-off between reach and quality) and be prepared to buy the gap as CD/download.

Well, from what I can see, the more services offered the better :smile: For example Spotify has some heavy metal albums, that Tidal does not - that I also have great difficulty finding/buying on disc. So to hear those albums, I’m literally tied to Spotify. And this isn’t an isolated case for me…

I understand that the content differs a lot and the superior SQ as well as the future high-res streaming and MQA support in Tidal are overweight by the lack of content for some users. I agree with @ewanw that of course the more streaming services are supported than it is ultimately the better for the users and the company. But isn’t it even better to have just one streaming service but fully implemented and seamlessly integrated so that there is no real distinction (apart from the icons on the album folder) for the end users? I think that the current Tidal integration although already great is still half-way from what will be done further on. So my view here is let the Roon team upgrade the Tidal integration to the perfection first… But of course I am biased here:) Having also been a Spotify user for some time, I switched to Tidal for the superior sound quality in the end of last year (but I think I would have switched anyway now given the Tidal integration in Roon, which I find much much better than the Spotify user interface).

@Dmitry Absolutely understand that point of view, and your experience. There is not much point of including a service/feature if it isn’t polished/usable. I guess that just has to be weighed against the ‘risk’ of not gaining new customers for reasons that I experience. As always, it’s a balance - but if a decently polished Spotify integration was technically possible, and all integration’s could be turned on and off (such as with Sonos), then I assume it would just be a positive thing.

100% agreed @evanw – but Spotify has actively shut us down. They’ve pretty much shut down everyone post-Spotify Connect (except Sonos, which they can’t afford to lose).

We do have working integrations with Deezer and Rhapsody, but because they didn’t give us their backend databases, the integrations feel like a bolt on, because we can’t match up the content on their network to content on your hard drives.

Definitely understand. Is it possible to integrate Spotify connect, so that the Roon server is a target itself? That would actually be a fantastic middle way solution, and will at least keep a Roon license in the picture :slight_smile: Is it a must for integrations to match up to local songs (ala ITunes Match) ? For me, having a bunch (or selectable) number of integrations show results of a search regardless if the artist/album exists locally is absolutely not necessary, if I understood you correctly. The main thing is finding music that you want to listen to :smile:

I moved 2 posts to an existing topic: Qobuz streaming integration would be appreciated

spotify connect works by basically being a little headless spotify client with a queue that lives in spotify’s servers.

we’d have to spoof being the official client to pull that off, which is exactly what they will shut down.

Can you explain this please?

Content in my hard drive has little to no metadata other than song title, album, duration, etc, oftentimes input by me and incosistent with general databases. And yet Roon manages to figure it all out. So what’s so difficult about remote content?

I would love to understand… Can you explain why an intermediate solution where Roon is essentially a speaker doesn’t work? Why would I want this at all? Upsampling/parametric eq/RAAT distribution coming up in 1.3 for one.

I have begged Jussi for some method “a la Soundflower” to allow HQP to become effectively a speaker so that any program can choose to play to HQP and get upsampling/NAA - but I don’t know the complexities involved in getting this to be reliable. With such a thing I could run Spotify into HQP.

I do understand however Roon’s architects’ reluctance to implement such a shitty solution. Fine.

we’ve actually contacted them about this, and it appears there may be a solution. However, this solution is pretty low priority for us, as it wouldn’t take advantage of the Roon experience, only the Roon streaming infrastructure. I’m not convinced it’d open a new market of users to recoup the cost of development… yet.

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I also understand that Roon would want to concentrate on solutions that provide the Roon experience given that is the product you’re selling. As you add more disconnected features the purpose dilutes and so will the quality.

A bigger question for me is what happens if Tidal doesn’t make it. Maybe I’m not a typical user but i don’t have a significant local library any more. Tidal and Roon are a great combination that provides me with all the music I want. However without Tidal, Roon makes limited sense to me. Not an unlikely scenario…

It is the one thing that is keeping me from buying a lifetime subscription.

Having support for Spotify, Apple Music would help but are unlikely as they want to own the interface…

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